Implosion of Syria Myths a 'Nervous Breakdown' for US, Allies

The New York Times has finally reported
what many watching the Syria insurgency have noticed all along:
US-facilitated weapons shipments are ending up in the hands of radical
jihadists. Of course while getting those facts right, the NYT,
blinded as it is by ideology, gets the conclusion wrong. The Times has
for some time been pushing the line that the US must act fast militarily
in Syria lest the mythical “people’s uprising” be hikacked by radicals.
In short, they have been — surprise — distorting facts to propagandize
for war. The NYT line is that US “inaction” on Syria is leading to the radicalization of the rebels. Earlier this month the Timesreported/opined that:

“Many Saudi and Qatari officials now fear that the
fighting in Syria is awakening deep sectarian animosities and, barring
such intervention, could turn into an uncontrollable popular jihad with
consequences far more threatening to Arab governments than the Afghan
war of the 1980s.”

Now we get the news from the Times that:

“‘The opposition groups that are receiving the most of
the lethal aid are exactly the ones we don’t want to have it,’ said one
American official familiar with the outlines of those findings,
commenting on an operation that in American eyes has increasingly gone
awry.”

Then the Times pushes its propagandistic conclusion to color the facts according to its own ideology:

“That conclusion, of which President Obama and other senior officials are aware from classified assessments…casts into doubt
whether the White House’s strategy of minimal and indirect intervention
in the Syrian conflict is accomplishing its intended purpose
of helping a democratic-minded opposition topple an oppressive
government, or is instead sowing the seeds of future insurgencies
hostile to the United States.” (emphasis added)

Ah yes, the fault is all with the “minimal and indirect” intervention
of the US in the conflict. Surely a Libya-type operation would already
be reaping US foreign policy the same kinds of rewards we are getting in
Libya!

So what is the truth? The truth is hard to swallow for the
propagandizing media and the propagandized public: Assad was telling the
truth when he told Barbara Walters in an interview earlier this year:

“Not everybody in the street was fighting for freedom.
You have different components, you have extremists, religious
extremists…like-minded people of Al Qaeda… [F]rom the very first few
weeks we had those terrorists they are getting more and more aggressive,
they have been killing. We have 1,000– over 1,100 soldiers and
policeman killed, who killed them? peaceful demonstrators? This is not
logical.”

Of course no one wanted to listen to him because he, like Saddam,
Milosevic, Gaddafi, etc before him, had been branded a “madman” in the
media. Who could listen to a madman? Who could possibly negotiate with a
madman? They only understand one thing, force. We have all heard this
interventionist neo-con garbage for decades but for some reason it still
seems to work.

Likewise, Mother Agnes Miriam of the Cross, a Melkite Greek Catholic nun, was telling the truth earlier this summer when she told the Irish Times that the rebels were targeting Christians in Syria. She continued:

“The West and Gulf states must not give finance to armed
insurrectionists who are sectarian terrorists, most of whom are from
al-Qaeda, according to a report presented to the German parliament. …
They bring terror, destruction, fear and nobody protects the civilians.
[There were] very few Syrians among the rebels. …Mercenaries should go
home.”

The reason that the weapons being funneled to the Syrian rebels are
ending up in the hands of radical Islamists is because the rebels are radical Islamists. The founder of Doctors Without Borders noticed it after working with the wounded in Syria. German intelligence noticed it after an investigation suggested that up to 95 percent of the Syrian rebels are not Syrian.

It is a myth that the initial peaceful protests only turned violent
reluctantly after they were met with force by the regime. In fact we see
plans early on to turn events in Syria toward regime change. We saw it
early in the 1996 US neo-conservative “Clean Break” study for then-Prime
Minister Netanyahu, which urged him to “contain, destabilize, and
roll-back” Syria and other countries in the region. We saw it more
recently in numerous influential think tank studies like that of
Brookings’ Saban Center’s oft-cited report
early this year tellingly titled, “Saving Syria: Assessing Options for
Regime Change.” Like the authors of the “Clean Break” paper, the Saban
Center is heavily neo-conservative and pro-Likud.

In conclusion, here is the really bad news: As the US Syria policy
falls apart, there is increasing danger that the built up tension in the
region — particularly the disastrous decision of the Turkish government
to support the rebels in Syria — is leading to a wider conflict that
threatens to spin out of control. Turkey and Armenia are at each others
throats, Armenia and Azerbaijan are preparing for war, Iraq warily
watches chaos on its borders, Russia is installing
its next-generation S-400 anti-aircraft missiles in its southern
military region near Turkey, and so on. Backed into a corner by a failed
policy, the US as usual is doubling down on a bad bet, feeding Turkey
bogus intelligence about chemical arms shipments aboard Syrian passenger
planes carrying Russian passengers, etc. Rebel mortars lobbed into
Turkey give a desperate Erdogan government the pretext it needs to
establish a buffer zone in Syria and hope for NATO reinforcements, which
are not coming. French observer Thierry Meyssan writes that “Turkey [is] on the verge of a nervous breakdown” after NATO “packs it in” on Syria.